We have a lot of elections in Alabama. We've had primaries and runoffs, municipal elections and some county elections, even a bond referendum -- all during this year. Next year, we have city elections in Birmingham. In 2014, we have statewide elections for governor and the other constitutional offices, along with legislative elections and, again, a round of local elections.

But few votes are going to matter as much as the one coming up Tuesday. It's the General Election, where we decide who will be president of the United States for the next four years. There is no suspense in that race in Alabama; Republican Mitt Romney will take the state, probably by a wide margin, and our nine electoral votes will go his way.

Still, don't let that discourage you from going to the polls. Even though it does not elect our president, the popular vote is at stake, and whoever wins the nation's top office needs to see a mandate of some sort, if that is possible.

More important, there are crucial local races to consider. In Jefferson County, we will be electing district and circuit court judges to serve for the next six years. These are the individuals who have the grave responsibility of deciding whether somebody charged with a crime remains free, or whether the civil case we've brought forward is decided in a fair and impartial way. We'll elect judges at Jefferson County Family Court, where our most vulnerable children find themselves far too often.

In past elections, The Birmingham News editorial board has interviewed candidates and made recommendations for voters. We were never trying to tell you how to vote, but rather, which candidates we believed were best qualified, regardless of political party.

This year, we decided that would not be possible. Since Alabama Media Group started its operation on Oct. 1, we realized there just would not be enough time before the Nov. 6 election for us to properly vet the many candidates who are running for office.

The candidate interviews we conduct before each election take hours and hours of time. We generally start them months before an election so that every candidate, if he or she so desires, has an opportunity to be heard.

We believed if we could not conduct thorough interviews with the candidates, it would be wrong for us to recommend which candidate is better. So this election cycle, we make no recommendations.

That aside, we urge you to be a smart voter. Find out about the candidates. Most of them have websites where you can learn about their philosophies and plans. Understand that it shouldn't matter whether a judge is a Republican or a Democrat; that is just the flawed system we have for selecting judge. Vote for the person, not the party, and do your best to find out about the person, especially in the judicial races.

The Jefferson County Bar Poll is one tool to use. Find it here. The Bar Poll is a vote of members of the Jefferson County Bar on which judicial candidates they find most qualified -- and least qualified.